Getting Things Done

Whether you are just thinking about starting a business, or are already up and running, your business plan is an essential ingredient to your success. The business plan is where you lay out everything that you know about your business and why you believe your business will succeed. It will serve as a guideline for the formation and development of your business. It will help you to make decisions and to measure your successes or shortfalls along the way. It is also a document that lenders such as financial institutions or the Small Business Administration will use to determine whether to loan you money for your business. In short, no business should be without a business plan.

The Federal Trade Commission strongly urges consumers to place their cell phone numbers on the National DO NOT CALL Registry to notify marketers that they don't want to get unsolicited telemarketing calls. Despite viral email, there is no new cell phone database.

A business seeking capital must recognize the importance of financial projections. A business financial projection is simply forecasting your sales and revenue to the lender. This information is important because it is a key indicator to your ability to repay a loan.

If you are unsure about financial forecasting for your business it might be best to hire a consultant. Most lenders will want to see a three- or five-year projection and there are as many as 14 items to include and fully support in your financial projection. You may also be asked to give a month-by-month breakdown for the first year, a quarterly breakdown for the next two years, and an annual breakdown for the final two years in your forecast.

Last March, Mission Valley Bank launched CardValet®, a mobile card management application that helps reduce account fraud by allowing cardholders to monitor accounts with their smartphone and control how, when and where their debit card is used.

CardValet was developed in partnership with Fiserv and is available in the Apple® App Store or Google® Play. Once CardValet is set up, cardholders have the ability to “turn off” their card when not in use, establish transaction spending limits and decline a transaction when the amount exceeds a predefined threshold.

Employees deserve to know what is expected of them and how they will be evaluated. A clear and up-to-date job description addresses this expectation while providing a basis for employee performance reviews, salary increases and career development. A job description also forces management to define goals and expectations that are companywide, and determine how to implement them through the employee channel. Using job descriptions is part of good management. Read on to learn about writing or updating a job description.

Recent natural disasters have (or should have) prompted organizations to review their plans for handling different types of emergencies. Being prepared for any type of natural or man-made disaster makes good business sense. Here are some ideas to consider for handling an emergency that make good common sense. Important Files

What happens in Los Angeles often impacts surrounding communities. Specifically, the earthquake safety laws signed in October 2015 by Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti are considered to be the toughest in the nation. It requires that the owners of an estimated 15,000 buildings most at risk of collapse during a major quake make the structures stronger.

The affected properties include non-ductile concrete buildings (not including detached single-family homes or duplexes built before 1977) and wood-frame apartment complexes built on top of carports. Property owners will have seven years to fix wood apartments and 25 years to fix concrete buildings under the new ordinance.

As financial institutions scrambled to issue EMV cards – short for Europay, MasterCard, and Visa chip technology -- to replace the standard magnetic technology, merchants prepared for the conversion. Merchants without an EMV-ready terminal in place now take on the full financial responsibility and risk in the event a chargeback occurs.

A chargeback can transpire in multiple ways: a dissatisfied customer calls their bank to refute either a product or service received from a merchant, a lost or stolen credit/debit card resulting in a fraudulent purchase, or perhaps a reversal of an unauthorized purchase due to identity theft.